1999 Massachusetts State Champions

Badminton players from all over Massachusetts headed to Northampton, Massachusetts for the 1999 state championships at Smith College this past April. Almost 100 players competed for ABCD titles in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles. Play started at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday in Ainsworth Gymnasium. Following 12 hours of play on Saturday, 8 hours on Sunday, and 24 dozen shuttlecocks, winners were decided in all categories. It seemed that everyone had plenty of play.

Special thanks for assistance goes to Nita Costello, Jeff Doty, Carolyn Johnson, and Devarati Ghosh. Nita drives over every year and spends two days taking care of registration. Her support of our badminton efforts is really appreciated. Jeff Doty has been around Massachusetts badminton for over 30 years. He has been past president of the Massachusetts Badminton Association. In fact, Jeff was running badminton tournaments even when we didn't have an association. Jeff helped run the scorer's table on Sunday. Carolyn is Jim Johnson's wife and has provided the great refreshments we have had for the past three years. Devarati Ghosh is a Harvard student and badminton enthusiast. She helped run the tournament on Saturday and won two events in her spare time.

Harvard continued to be well represented with a large number of players. They also seemed to eat more pizza than anyone else. We missed the Marblehead contingent from 1998 as well as a good number of female players. In fact, we didn't have enough women players to run an elimination tournament. But the women's event was quite competitive with Kokoe Tanaka, a new player to this tournament, winning the singles. Kokoe had two excellent matches against Ulla Winkler and Bonnie May. Tanaka and Winkler combined to make a formidable doubles team and won this event handily.

One highlight was the presence of Andy Chong, Marblehead's coach and former top singles player in the U. S. Andy's match against last year's singles champ, Woody Seriporn, captivated everyone's attention. Andy won the singles as well as the mixed doubles with pick-up partner, Regina Morgenthaler. Chong and Morgenthaler's match against Ulla Winkler and Kyril Boyarin went three games and was in doubt until the final point.

Men's doubles was highly contested. Number one seeds Zubin Talavia and Nachi Junankar had their work cut out for them. They had to get past Trevor and Brandon Lai as well as 1997 doubles champions Chris Lawrence and Robert Lee. Although the matches were close, Talavia and Junankar prevailed. Meanwhile, Chong and his student, Ted Shear, seemed to sail through their half of the draw to meet Talavia and Junankar in the finals. Chong and Shear won the first game 15-9. The two teams played evenly until Talavia and Junankar got the last three points to win the second game 15-12. Following the break it was all Talavia and Junankar as they won the third game and the doubles championship 15-6.

One of the longest matches was the men's A singles consolation. Brandon Lai and Laszlo Drimusz seemed to play forever with Laszlo finally prevailing in the third game. Another long match was the finals of the men's B singles between Anil Tandon and Frank Xia. Both players were quite tired by the third game but Tandon pulled out the victory and the B title.

There were numerous other great matches - too numerous to mention. Our 1999 Massachusetts State Champions are:

The 2000 Championships

Jim Johnson announced at the tournament that he will not serve as tournament director for 2000. However, he has volunteered the Smith College facilities and will serve as facility coordinator. Volunteers were solicited at the tournament to organize our next state championship. At present, Alan Rintoul has tentatively agreed to serve as tournament director. Andy Chong will help with the table. We'll need some other volunteers to work parts of the event. If you are willing to work part of the tournament (remember that you can still play) please contact Jim Johnson at 413-585-3975 or jjohnson@science.smith.edu.

Meanwhile, let's all hit the courts and start preparing for another great state championship event.